All Kinds of Everything Remind Me of You.
Song written by Derry Lindsay and Jackie Smith-performed by Dana.
Still processing all the work seen at the private view of This “Me” of Mine curated by Jane Boyer at Strange Cargo in Folkestone. The fact that I am still thinking about it requires me to write something and the obvious choice would be a review but I have decided not to do that because: there are too many artists, not enough time and more importantly Jane Boyer has written far more lucidly, eruditely and critically than I ever could. And in any case my writing here is a place where I am free to respond from my gut, less critically-and more spontaneously, so here goes…
An interesting, provoking conversation with David Minton about how artworks “perform” in a gallery where we discussed difficulties inherent in art talk that strays away from or goes beyond the qualitative decision making and formal aspects involved in the creation of an artwork. Mindful of our talk and suddenly wary of words, I challenged myself to be succinct and pared down my initial responses to David’s work: Peripheral Vision (2010, oil on canvas, dimensions: 152.4 x 121.9), to as few words as possible, these are the words I could not do without:
tense(ful)-ennui.
My response to Sandra Crisp’s work The Bigger Picture 2010, Large Format Ink Jet Print 110 cm x 110 cm, I didn’t have to think about, it downloaded all at once like a torrent. Intelligently, sciency The Bigger Picture takes liberties with its densely digital Vuillard-like structure and seductive colour palette suggestive of Elizabeth Frankenthaler. I know/feel that it is saying something about our information gathering/processing age but am more interested in what happens to the surface of The Bigger Picture as I walk past. Myriad, kaleidoscopic potentialities present themselves and I am charmed.
Unfortunately I missed meeting Kate Murdoch by a whisker but recognised her piece immediately: It’s the Little Things is an assemblage of Kate’s Nana’s “stuff.” I find it hard to be objective with Kate’s work as there are so many cross-over points to my own, I suspect we are a similar age and almost every object resonates emotionally with me. One word surfaces and repeats, and that is tender the selection, placement and arrangement of objects seems ritualistic, I am reminded of memory jugs, where a deceased person’s “stuff” is collected and used to embellish a jug, creating a new object with new function. Her work seems to reference old relationships and at the same time suggest and project forward to new ones.
Obsession with subject matter and clever placing of the work Glass Menagerie by Cathy Lomax may have been initially why it attracted me so. A group of kitsch transparent glass animals stand on a mirrored surface, flickering lights are projected through the creatures onto the wall behind. The effect is extraordinary, eerie, Disneyesque shadow animals cavort madly behind the dumb colourful still ones. It filled me with sad happiness, almost but not quite, pathos.
It was strange meeting people that I have only known remotely through a-n and Twitter and looking at actual work seen previously only on screen. The exhibition is an expression of these modern kinds of social and professional relationships and an absolute must see.
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